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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]
Have you been to a gun show?  I'm betting you haven't.  Yes, you have background checks.  Don't believe me, go to one and try to buy a gun. [/quote]

You may want to check your facts.

[url]http://www.governing.com/gov-data/safety-justice/gun-show-firearms-bankground-checks-state-laws-map.html[/url]
[quote]Known as the "gun show loophole," most states do not require background checks for firearms purchased at gun shows from private individuals -- federal law only requires licensed dealers to conduct checks.

Under the Gun Control Act of 1968, federal law clearly defined private sellers as anyone who sold no more than four firearms per year. But the 1986 Firearm Owners Protection Act lifted that restriction and loosely defined private sellers as people who do not rely on gun sales as the principal way of obtaining their livelihood. [/quote]

In fact only 11 states require background checks for all purchases, 7 states only require background checks for handgun sales.  So 32 states have no requirements for background checks and 7 states allow purchases for non-handguns without background checks.

In addition, this isn't just a small problem.  The sheer volume of purchases done "privately" is quite large:

[url]http://smartgunlaws.org/gun-laws/policy-areas/background-checks/universal-background-checks/[/url]
[quote]The most dangerous gap in federal firearms laws today is the “private sale” loophole.  Although federal law requires licensed firearms dealers to perform background checks on prospective purchasers and maintain records of all gun sales, it does not require unlicensed “private” sellers to do so. [u][b]An estimated 40% of all firearms transferred in the U.S. are transferred by unlicensed individuals.[/b][/u]

[...]

According the U.S. Department of Justice, because federal law does not require universal background checks, [b]“individuals prohibited by law from possessing guns can easily obtain them from private sellers and do so without any federal records of the transactions.”[/b]  “The private-party gun market,” one study observed, “has long been recognized as a leading source of guns used in crimes.”  Although the private sale loophole is frequently referred to as the “gun show” loophole (because of the particular problems associated with gun shows), it applies to all private firearm sales, regardless of where they occur.

The growth of the Internet has significantly increased the ability of individuals prohibited from possessing firearms to find sellers willing to transfer firearms to them without background checks.

[list]As of September 2013, about 67,000 firearms were  listed for sale online from private, unlicensed sellers.[/list]
[list]29% of ads by private sellers on Armslist.com (a popular website for firearm sales) were posted by high-volume private sellers who posted five or more ads over an eight-week period.[/list]
[list]According to an undercover investigation conducted by the City of New York, 62% of private online firearm sellers agreed to sell a firearm to a buyer even after the buyer had told the seller that he or she probably could not pass a background check.[/list][/quote]

This second article has a lot of additional information, such as how a huge volume of illegal gun activity is generated by the private sales loophole.  By cutting off the private sales loophole, you will cut down significantly on criminal access to guns.  Lawful gun owners can still get their guns via gun shops and gun shows with a background check, but you can cut down the sheer volume of guns going to criminals and illegal gun users.  [/quote]

Actually...the Brady Bill did just that, cut off the private and interstate sale of guns.  It did nothing:
http://www.law.virginia.edu/html/news/2003_spr/cook.htm
[/quote]

Quoting from your own article:
[quote]The Brady Bill had two iterations, Cook explained, but in each the law applies only to handgun sales by federally licensed gun dealers. [/quote]
As I quoted from my citation above, 40% of all gun sales were done by private sales.  Only 18 states (36%) required background checks for purchases of handguns.  Plus, the article I cited, says that a majority of guns used in crime plus guns used by persons who would fail background checks were purchased by private sales that would not be covered by the Brady bill.  I think that the sheer volume of guns purchased outside the restrictions of the Brady bill lend credence to the argument that you can't judge anything by the effects of a bill that over covers well less than 50% of gun sales and virtually none of the gun sales by the most likely abusers of guns (criminals and those who would fail background checks).

[quote]
It did help suicides somewhat.  The waiting period made people reconsider because of the extra day or to.  Murders didn't decrease.
http://www.factcheck.org/2013/02/did-the-1994-assault-weapons-ban-work/
[/quote]

Again, quoting from your own article:
[quote]And most fundamentally, the authors wrote, [b]“because the banned guns and magazines were never used in more than a fraction of all gun murders,[/b] even the maximum theoretically achievable preventive effect of the ban on gun murders is almost certainly too small to detect statistically with only one year of post-ban crime data.” The two later major studies of the ban included more years of analysis and concluded with an “updated assessment” that was published in 2004.[/quote]

It's hard to conclude that the Brady bill was at all a salient data point for any conclusion about its effect on murders.  The point is that the majority of murders are conducted by criminals and others who would fail a background check and who purchase their guns through private sales, hence are not covered by the Brady bill which only restricts license gun dealers.  There is a far bigger loophole to close and that is requiring background checks for private sales as well as license dealer sales.

https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/204431.pdf

Along with an official study that stated assualt weapons bans have little effect.

[/quote]

I think you are selectively reading just a few conclusions without the reasoning why they came to those conclusions.  From your article:

[quote]
Title XI, Subtitle A of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 imposed a 10-year ban on the “manufacture, transfer, and possession” of certain semiautomatic firearms designated as assault weapons (AWs).

[...]

The ban also prohibits most ammunition feeding devices holding more than 10 rounds of ammunition (referred to as large capacity magazines, or LCMs). An LCM is arguably the most functionally important feature of most AWs, many of which have magazines holding 30 or more rounds. The LCM ban’s reach is broader than that of the AW ban because many non-banned semiautomatics accept LCMs. Approximately 18% of civilian-owned firearms and 21% of civilian-owned handguns were equipped with LCMs as of 1994.

[...]

AWs were used in only a small fraction of gun crimes prior to the ban: about 2% according to most studies and no more than 8%. Most of the AWs used in crime are assault pistols rather than assault rifles.
[list]LCMs are used in crime much more often than AWs and accounted for 14% to 26% of guns used in crime prior to the ban.[/list]
[list]AWs and other guns equipped with LCMs tend to account for a higher share of guns used in murders of police and mass public shootings, though such incidents are very rare.[/list]

[...]

Following implementation of the ban, the share of gun crimes involving AW declined by 17% to 72% across the localities examined for this study

[...]

The decline in the use of AWs has been due primarily to a reduction in the use of assault pistols (APs), which are used in crime more commonly than assault rifles (ARs). There has not been a clear decline in the use of ARs, though assessments are complicated by the rarity of crimes with these weapons and by substitution of post-ban rifles that are very similar to the banned AR models.

[...]

However, the decline in AW use was offset throughout at least the late 1990s by steady or rising use of other guns equipped with LCMs in jurisdictions studied (Baltimore, Milwaukee, Louisville, and Anchorage). The failure to reduce LCM use has likely been due to the immense stock of exempted pre-ban magazines, which has been enhanced by recent imports. 
[/quote]

The article says that the lack of effect is due to the fact that there are sufficient non-banned weapons with large capacity magazines that people can switch to.  So, basically, we have just switched what weapons are used.  The ban did have an effect.  And if you were to ban other LCM weapons, and introduce background checks to reduce the number of criminals and other individuals that would fail background checks, you could significantly reduce the number of crime committing individuals.

Background checks still allow law abiding citizens who want to own guns to have those guns.  Closing the private sale loophole and instigating  background checks only restricts the 2nd amendment for criminals that those with terrorist ties.  Those who want to defend their homes, can still do so.

Why are gun advocates so afraid of closing background check loopholes?  Who do you think you're protecting?[/quote]

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